Printing PDF patterns

After you’ve purchased your pattern(s), you will be emailed a link to download your file. You can download this file up to five times before the link expires. The file will come zipped, and within this zip file you’ll find the pattern instructions, a layered PDF of tiled sheets, and a layered PDF of A0 sheets. The A0 file is what you’ll want to use if you’re getting your pattern printed at a print shop; the tiled sheets are designed to be printed at home on an ordinary printer. Each tile measures 7 x 10″, which will print on both A4 and the US letter paper.

The pattern instructions provide a diagram showing how the tiled sheets fit together.

To print at home:

Unzip your file and open the PDF in an PDF reader such as Adobe Reader (freely available to download). When you go to print, be sure that you have selected ‘actual size’ for the document size, not ‘fit to page’ or any scaling. It is imperative that the pattern prints at its actual size; to check it is going to print correctly, start by printing the very first page alone. This page features a 10 x 10 cm square that you can measure to check you are printing at the correct size.

To use layers in the PDF:

In your PDF reader, there will be a menu (in Adobe Reader this is on the left-hand side of the screen) that should expand to show you the layers within the document. Each size is in its own layer, to enable you to only print out the size(s) you require. To print only your size(s), you need to have the relevant layer ticked, as well as the layers labelled ‘Grainlines and pattern markings’ and ‘Tiling’. You may wish to print more than one size if your measurements cross over between sizes and you are planning to grade between them.

To assemble the tiled sheets:

Each tile features a number and a letter in grey; the numbers indicate rows and the letters columns. Separate the tiles into groups for each row (e.g. all the 1’s together) and then trim off one long side and one short side of each sheet. If you have a cutting mat and a craft knife you can do these in batches using a ruler. Stick the sheets together in rows, overlapping so that the edges of the tiles match and the black triangles along each edge meet to form diamonds. Then stick the rows together, again matching the frames and triangles.

Then either cut around the pattern pieces or trace them off and you’re good to go!